Do you believe their was a worldwide flood?

Aegist - what do you make of the scientists (in whom you so trust) stating that Homo Sapians have descended from a relatively small genetic pool - a family - some even suggest just one female?

I would have thought with evolutionary theory it would be a remarkable outcome of millions of years of evolution that 6 billion humans came from just one small place and family on the globe. There are obviously two or more ways this information can be understood.

As for your statement scientists are always looking for the truth and totally honest - you've never seen the bitching, back stabbing, funding battles, lies, character assassination, that goes on as people jockey for the number one position for fame, funding, recognition, own selfish desires even amongst themselves as can be common in any work environment - go visit any major university the egos of most professors can be the source of much humor.

The more I read different scientists the more I realize they are always arguing with one another. They seldom agree on anything.

They can't even agree on Global Warming - particularly if their funding comes from a petro-chemical giant - WHAT AN TOTALLY HONEST SCIENTIST INFLUENCED BY MONEY - NO NEVER - IMPOSSIBLE says aegist. If you say we are unduly influence by the Bible (which I admit we are), surely you recognize that some scientists might be influence by more than just the 'facts'

As for the caves if ever your in Sydney I recommend the trips - they are very beautiful.

As for each and every example of legends I'll summarize as given here

However, Cihai, published in Taiwan as late as 1988, and Matthews' Chinese-English Dictionary of 1931 still show the number 8. In fact, an ancient form of the word boat shows it to be eight mouths.

The question is, why should there be eight mouths and not seven, or six or any other number. Obviously they refer to eight people, but which eight?

One possible explanation is that the word derives from an otherwise forgotten Chinese memory of a great worldwide flood in ancient times that is better known to the west as the Great Flood of Noah's day as recorded in the Jewish peoples' Hebrew Old Testament book of Genesis.

According to that account, there were only eight people saved in Noah's day (Gen 7:13): Noah, his three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah's wife and the three sons' wives.

It was not a nationalistic epic, since the Hebrew account places the survivors as landing on - not on Mt Hermon, the highest mountain in Israel today - but the mountains of Ararat which is presently at the Turkish-Armenian border, far away from Israel.

Moreover, the later New Testament books of 1 Peter 3:8 and 2 Peter 2:5 repeat the number eight who were saved.

In fact, over many parts of the world, there were other ancient peoples who had similar stories. Similar stories come from southern Asia, the South Sea islands, and all parts of the continent of America - but they are very rare in Africa (Ancient Egypt had a flood story) and Europe.

The Greeks had several versions of a myth in which a king Deucalion and his wife Prrrha escaped from a great flood by floating in a chest that finally landed on a mountain. They took refuge on Mt Parnassus (in central Greece not far from Delphi) and, at Zeus' command, cast stones which became a new race of human beings.

An Indian myth from the 6th century BC tells how the hero Manu was advised by a fish to build a ship as a means of escape from the coming flood. When it came, the fish towed the ship to a mountain top.

Excations at Ur in Iraq by Sir Leonard Wooley in 1929 may have confirmed the ancient belief of many nations when he discovered a layer of clay 3m deep which was apparently deposited by a great ancient flood.

It seemed to echo the story of a great worldwide flood as recorded in a Babylonian clay tablet, the Epic of Gilgamesh, written over 2,500 years ago. According to that epic the hero and sole survivor Utnapishtim landed on Mount Nisir (in Kurdistan, upper Iraq).

Today a surviving Chinese legend of an extensive ancient flood vaguely revolves around the person of a goddess Nukua who supposedly ended the flood by patching up the blue sky with five-coloured stones; the details are very different from the Hebrew version.

Only the character "boat" and its eight passengers seems to remain as a constant reminder of what had happened long, long ago. (Is this enough or do you want me to find more?)

I've come across that before that the chinese word for boat is 'eight mouths' - any experts on chinese writing out there?

 

Especially remarkable is the persistence of that biblical name Noah. And this is particularly so when you consider the ultimate language differences between peoples, and the extreme local distortions which (developed in flood legends. Yet the name survived virtually unchanged in such isolated places as Hawaii (where he was called Nu-u), the Sudan (Nuh), China (Nu-Wah), the Amazon region (Noa), Phrygia (Noe) and among the Hottentots (Noh and Hiagnoh). :

 

Try this one

Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that "mitochondrial Eve"--the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people--lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old." Ann Gibbons, "Mitochondrial Eve: Wounded, But Not Dead Yet", Science, Vol. 257, 14 August 1992, p. 873.

 

I agree. I think there was a flood.

 

Oh boy! You guys a going to get a "flood" of big words from Aegist for this stuff. He really thinks he is absolutely correct. Hold on to your hats!!

Col

 

Nah why bother. It's obvious people who believe in the flood haven't read anything other than the bible their entire lives. (not even this thread).

So knock yourselves out. believe in fairytales.

 

Its really easy to believe in a fairytales when you can't prove that it happened, that does not mean that it did not happen though...I would tend to wonder why there are different versions....that makes me think that at one point there was a flood, and to the people there it seemed like the whole world was flooded...what actually happened I'm not sure of though.

 

That seems quite likely. The only thing I know for certain is that a global flood is impossible. Literally impossible, for at least 50 different well founded reasons. There is no possible way for ALL OF THE LAND ON EARTH to be covered with water for one year, and for the world to be as it is now.

And there will be no convincing me otherwise until you systematically overthrow all geological theory, all biological theory, all geographical theory, all physics, all paleontology, all hydrology, all oceonography etc. Every science agrees: Global Flood = Impossible.

So say what you will about scientists fighting over stuff, and about disagreements, and uncertainties, and even plain contradictions. It is just plain stupid to go and take minor variations, or minor disagreements between scientists and then proclaim that "Well, since they can't agree whether it was 150,000 years or 200,000 years, clearly they have no idea, therefore it was 6,000 years". There is no grounds for that assumption.

 

It actually is possible...think about how deep the oceans actually are....I am pretty sure that all the land could fit under the oceans, after all there is more square footage of water than land on earth. It might not be a deep layering of water, but I bet it could happen. Besides, God can and will do what God wants to do, and anything is possible.

 

and that is the very point. It was God's purpose. This is the point that Aegist has a problem with. He's denying God's existence completely, no matter how hard he looks. It's like he has a metal plate in his head that acts as magnet between him and the wall.

Col

 

Sorry, ALstar. You deserve a reply, you are actually trying to communicate. So I apologise, I have clearly lost control of my emotional side.

Seems entirely reasonable, and quite probably.

it does not, however, mean that there was one female alive at the time that that mitochondrial eve lived. Regardless of whether she existed 150,000 or 6,000 years ago. What it means is that teh descendents of all of the other females alive at that time invariably died.

This bottlenecking of DNA is probably quite common in Evolution as new species are created. For instance, maybe mitochondrial eve had that one freak mutation which added 10% greater lucidity to our brains, and thus her offspring were significantly smarter than the other humans of that time. That enabled them to hunt smarter, remember where berries were, and take better advantage of the social structures in their societies. Over the long run they would be more successful, and they would numerate. Plus they would probably selectively choose to only breed with other intelligent humans, thus they were subconsciously breeding the old version out of the gene pool.

Eventually, partly through sexual selection, partly through out competition and aprtly out of chance, the only humans left on earth just happen to be all descended from one woman.

In theory it is of course possible that there was a bottleneck simply because everyone else was wiped out, but that of course means humanity would have suffered terrible inbreeding affects for the next 10 or more generations. Of course, this doesn't rule it out as a biological possibility, but if it happened, the survival of that species was surely a fluke of the largest magnitude.

I am under no illusions about People. Its about 'Science' that I romanticize. Science can not be twisted by any one person, it requires communal agreement. Yes of coruse, global warming a great case for the 'against' here, but that will always happen when you talk about something which is in fact 70% political and 20% economic and only like 10% scientific. It is the humans involved who do the crap, and of course they use the word 'science' to portray their case as having more credibility. However at the end of the day Science is actually broken into two parts:
1. The fact orientated data mining aspect
2. The subjective interpretation of that data

And that is the most brilliant part of Science, is that it keeps the facts separate from the theory.

I live in Sydney. I've been to Jenolen caves a couple of time, don't recall what you mention though. Can you remember the name of the cave that you saw this in?

I don't find any of that to be compelling in any regard. I am sure there are a lot of similarities in the mythology of various cultures on earth. I'm no professional on the matter, so I can't list a whole bunch off the top of my head, but I have encountered enough to know that, well, in general, human mythology revolves esentially around the lives they live. And the fact that any sort of land can flood means that it is likely that they should have a flood story in their mythology.

The question then becomes: Do cultures that live high in mountains also have flood stories in their mythology?

and

Do we find earthquake stories common throughout cultures who have lived in areas of faultline activity?
-Because if we do, then that just as equally indicates that there was once a gigantic earthquake which shook the entire earth (as much as flood stories from all over the earth indicates a global flood.)

Reference? And I would also like to see primary sources which indicate that all of these names come from cultural stories of a flood which wiped everything out.

This is interesting! You have actually done research (which is honestly the only reason I am replying to your posts. I had unsubscribed from this thread and wasn't going to come back...).

Interestingly they do address the most obvious concern on their own page, then dismiss, yet don't address it:

OBJECTION: Isn't accepting these scientific dating methods 'picking and choosing' or data mining, where you reject the vast majority of evolutionary timescales, but accept these?

All evolutionary timescales are built on assumptions. This evidence is different in that it uses empirical data:

"The observed substitution rate reported here is very high compared to rates inferred from evolutionary studies." (Parsons 1997, above) The original rate was inferred by evolutionists, and the date of MtDNA Eve was decided by an inferred rate! But now we have an observed rate, which is much higher than the inferred rate. How is this data mining?

Well, i guess the author does sort of address it, but it is addressed in exactly the same way that Kalvin kept 'addressing' me. "You assume, I work with facts". No. The evidence in this article is no more or less factual than all of the other methods of interpretting the length of time between Mt.Eve and now. It is just a different method.

For instance, this article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8533083&dopt=Citation
produced 3 years after the article cited in that paper says that there was no bottle neck at all.

This article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12547517&dopt=Citation
produced only 4 years ago (as opposed to the 15 years ago of the article cited by the page you refered to) actually questions interpretations of the Mt DNA ageing methodology.

So what has happened here, is one person, has produced one result at one point in time, and the uneducated with a biased interest in the topic has grasped hold of that one result and claimed it to be true despite all of the contrary evidence.

That is not how science works. Science works by letting hundreds of different scientists go to work. They do the experiments (the factual stuff) and then they interpret them (the subjective stuff). The great variation you see in conclusion all comes from the different results. When one person does experiment Y, the results imply something to them, but another person does experiment X and the results of that imply something entirely different to that person. Their two explanations clash, so they argue. That is what the public may see on a naive level. But this is where the beuty of science comes into it. That is not where the question stays. That debate may continue on for years or even decades, but inevitably more experiments are done, and most often it is some new scientist who has just entered the field who looks at the evidence (the factual stuff) with new eyes, and puts together a theory which incorporates all of the data (instead of just one sides data, then juxtaposes that against the other sides data).

Science is about disagreement. But it results in eventual resolution.

This article grabs one piece of work which has subsequently not been verified or received very much attention (no citations according to pubmed, only a few citations according to Google).

To jump to conclusions from one piece of scientific work, is to completely misuse scientific study.

And that is precisely what most creationist articles online do. They IGNORE the vast majority of the scientific work, and they cling like a leech to the one or two articles which agree with their pre-conceived conclusions.

And that is why no scientist thinks anything of a creationist.

 

For sure. If you want to believe God magic'd the whole thing, and made the earth flat (btw, i had to laugh when you figured the earth 'could fit' under the water...think about it), but you also have to assume god magic'd the animals fitting on board the ark, and he had to magic the animals happily co-existing for 1 year, probably without need of food or needing to defacate for the whole year too. And he would have to magic the survival of all of the different species of disease that exist too.

And then after the flood he would have to magic the animals back to their natural habitat (after he magic'd all of the habitats back into their proper places).

Makes you wonder why he would bother wiping everything out to begin with!

but yes, as Cheao SEO Services has pointed out, I see no evidence for the existence of God anyway, so I see no way to justify believeing in God magicing anything.

 

Its not the Lucas one - as your in the huge cavern that you drive through at the bottom of that long down hill run (mind your brakes, use a low gear) its one of the ones you enter on the right. It goes down and is one of the few caves that actually reaches groundwater. As you go through the cave you come across a small passage near metal hand rails - there is a light with an electrical wire running up to it. The limestone formation comes down off this - it resembles a sheet in the wind. If you email the jenolan caves I sure they can even give you a name for it.

 

are people just born to firgure out past advents?you could live to 150 and just before you die you'll still think what if.

 

Yes there is a worry of mining data - picking what you want - but I wanted to show you there are at least a couple of things that at least SHOULD RAISE SOME QUESTIONS to other possibilities. You are going to believe whatever you want to believe, however a thinking person (as I believe you believe yourself to be) will question their beliefs from different angles.

As for why the science of evolution has more 'facts' than the science of creation (or rapid catastrophic change) - consider the different in funding - you can't get funding in a secular university unless you are a evolutionist - those scientists who are Creationists must carefully state there findings in a way that allows them to still be published. Instead of saying this is an example of a world wide flood - they must write in different terms - this is an example of rapid change caused in the presence of large quantities of water. Otherwise they are dropped like a hot cake.

 

And yes the mDNA does rely on the very things we are criticizing you for - i.e. mutations may change in rate due to external factors - radiation, breeding, lifestyle, etc. Therefore with any dating method there are problems.

 

P.S. I don't believe God magic the mountains flat - I don't believe there were mountains of any note until after the flood.

Yes I believe there was a massive ice age after the flood - thanks to the disruption to the earths currents, loss of the water canopy ice formed quickly until the gulf stream and other ocean currents worked to redistribute the planets heat.

I think thanks to man's activities we are seeing massive change today that may result in the lost of the North pole ice cap. Who knows how much this will stuff up the world weather patterns. I'm not planning on buying any water front real estate thats for sure. If the Greenland icecap does melt you might be surprised how much water there is on the planet.

Even in evolutionist timescales they believe oceans have had a 150 m difference in sea level over time. Thats alot.

 

As if the Catholic church isn't the buggest business on Earth? It's not like religious institutions can't get money. Yes its true that no real university will accept work which is obviously designed with the sole purpose of gratifying creationism, but there are plenty of 'Christian' universities out there which have no purpose other than to do this. Everything they do is an attempt to disprove evolution etc.

So no, I don't think money has much to do with it. I think it is the facts which stops ID and Creationism from being accepted. Particularly when you consider that 90% of the energy of the average creationist is spent trying to disprove evolution rather than trying to do actual research.

Creation used to be the accepted norm. Evolution replaced it because it was a better theory. It has only strengthened since then. There is no way that evolution will be replaced by creationism ever again on a scientific stage.

 

As for some cultural clues (at least interesting from the point of view of how far certain pieces of knowledge traveled around the globe) - http://www.arky.org/museum/search/misc/aclsc.htm

Personally to me it makes a lot more sense that the reason we see pyramids all around the world is that these people were not isolated from one another from thousands of years but trade and communication went all around the globe. In fact your science is now suggesting that N.America was settled from both west and east. Which is what I would expect if people left from Ararat and went in two opposite directions.

 

I still don't understand how you can explain things like the platypus. How did the platypus get to Australia from ararat?

Actually, since you seem to actually be willing to participate in this game lets do it properly. How do you explain the geographically specific distribution of species all over the earth? Why do we find australian animals only in Australia and nowhere else?